Latest ESO Call for Proposals

The ESO Call for Proposals is, from P117 issued once a year: Yearly Cycle (YC). The duration of P117 is 12 months (1 May 2026 - 30 April 2027). The P117 Yearly Call will remain open for about four weeks.

To address the increased duty cycle resulting from the change to the YC, a Fast Track Channel (FTC) with staggered deadlines throughout the year will be introduced during P117.

You can find the precise date of the latest Call for Proposal at the ESO Phase 1 page.

Proposals must be submitted by the respective deadline (end of September for the YC) using the Web-based p1 interface accessible at www.eso.org/p1. Accessing p1 requires a ESO User Portal account. You can find find more info about the ESO User Portal in this article and at the ESO User Portal page.

Up to 5% of the general observing time may be used for Director's Discretionary Time Proposals (DDT proposals). For detailed information about DDT proposals, see the separate DDT Proposal page. As of 1 April, 2019, proposals must be submitted via the same Web-based p1 interface mentioned above (instructions can be found here).

For sudden astronomical events that require urgent or immediate observations, detailed requests can be submitted via the DDT channel. A detailed description of ESO's Target of Opportunity (ToO) policy is given in a separate document. Please read it carefully before submitting any ToO request.